The National Reading Center (NRC) commemorated the writer Musine Kokalari on her birthday.

NRC published the writings of Selfixhe Ciu, one of the writers of that time and a classmate of Musine Kokalari.

Ciu refers to Kokalari as a symbol of the beauty and wisdom of the Albanian woman.

Below is the full text of Selfixhe Ciut:

We commemorate the symbol of beauty and wisdom of the Albanian woman, the writer Musine Kokalari, on her birthday.

Her work is increasingly drawing the attention of critics and readers, making us more familiar with one of the first authors of Albanian literature.

Together with a constellation of women educated in Italian schools, they gave life to feminist movements in pre-war Albania.

Our first writings were very timid, almost like diaries, like confessions of ourselves. Musinea had just graduated that summer, and we spent the summer of 1937 together at my house on the beach of Durrës.

I had started publishing before, quite by chance, encouraged by my cousin Shemsi Totozani, who read the writings and helped me publish them in the press of the time, in magazines and newspapers under the pseudonym Kolombja.

Musinea was still wavering, not that she didn’t have the courage to publish, or that anyone was stopping her, not at all. In her family, everyone was cultured and no one hindered her, but she was the one who demanded of herself.

In her diary are the following writings: “My friend,” “You,” etc., which were written in the days when Musinea turned twenty years old. The writing “My friend” is about an Israeli boy named Pattak; I don’t remember his last name.

It was a sincere friendship, a platonic love in everyone’s heart, but no one ever claimed it. Pattaku was a boy with an athletic build, broad forehead, and very intelligent. I don’t know what happened later. I never heard of him again after he graduated.

It was a time when we read a lot.

That summer of 1937 was our season of dreams and the beginning of Musine’s published work under the pseudonym “MUZA”. After graduating, Musinea came to us in Durrës. We walked for hours on the coast. We walked to the Dajlani Bridge.

Then we would go back to our rooms, and each one would prepare the article for the “Shtypi” newspaper. We sent them to Kola Berisha’s address, and from August to the beginning of January 1938, with Petro Marko (DEMO KOTI), we ran the “Rrymëzime” column.

/m.ll/